100 Oneshots Challenge
by Shimmertail
Summary: My submission to Prin Pardus' challenge!
1. Chapter 1: Injured

She was always home before sunset like a good girl, because she was a good girl. She always went out to do her chores, to catch something for Mama and herself and the deaf she-cat that lived next door. She steered clear of the rough crowds, kept to herself, because she didn't have time to mess around, not when she had Mama to look after.

That night, it was nearly moonhigh before she crossed the threshold of the tiny, dusty house.

She breezed in on paws so light, she may as well have been flying, gliding into the room with a smile that lit up her face. "I'm sorry that I'm late, Mama," she apologized at once, seeing the concern in the patched she-cat's eyes. "I didn't mean to worry you; time just got away from me."

Her mother chuckled as she sat up in her bed, licking the top of the little ginger's head, smack-dab between her ears. "It's fine, sweetie-pie. Is everything okay?"

She nodded. "Oh, yes, ma'am, everything's wonderful." That smile spread over her muzzle again, enchanted, absolutely moonstruck. "It's just...Mama, I met a tom." And she beamed so brightly then that she could have outshone the stars themselves, and her mother had to return the smile.

"That's wonderful, Annie. What's his name?"

Annie licked one flame-colored paw, drawing it over her ear. "Tobias," she sighed, settling down in the nest of rags beside her mother. "Lovely name, don't you think? So regal. Better than _Annie_, anyways." A look of distaste flickered over her face, crinkling her nose, but it was gone just as quickly, replaced by that airy smile. "And he's so _handsome_, Mama, not like any of the other toms in the neighborhood. He's tall, and he's got this golden fur that just shines when he stands in the sunlight, and his _eyes_! They're bright green, the most beautiful pair I've ever seen." She blushed underneath her fur, looking up at the older she-cat bashfully. "You probably think I'm being silly," she murmured.

Her mother purred, nuzzling Annie's cheek. "No, sweetie-pie, I think that you're being young, and that's a good thing. You're always so serious for a youngin', and it's good to see you so happy." She gave her a small, secretive smile. "So, when are you going to see this Tobias again?"

The tabby rested her head on her paws, wrapping her tail tightly around her body; a chill had come earlier in the year than she'd expected, the cold moons nipping right at their heels. "I was giving him directions around the neighborhood—he'd never been to this part of the city, and he was quite lost—and he offered to take me on a walk tomorrow. I'll go and meet him in the part at noon. You don't mind?"

"Of course not, Annie. Just be careful, alright? I don't want to see you get hurt, sweetie-pie."

"Yes, Mama, I promise that I will be." Of course she would be, because she was a good girl.

* * *

"Annie, you need to come feed him now; his last meal was at noon, and it's getting dark."

She turned away from the window with some difficulty, blinking haggard blue eyes as she attempted to focus on what her mother had said. "Feed him?" she repeated, voice brittle as her gaze fell on the little ball of fur curled up at his grandmother's belly.

The elderly she-cat nodded. "Yes, sweetheart, he needs to eat. Come on, Annie, rest just for a moment." Her green eyes glittered with something that Roxanne couldn't place, couldn't comprehend. Didn't she _understand_?

"Can't it wait, Mama?" she pleaded, turning away from the window but not moving to the bed. "Just until Tobias gets back, please? It shouldn't be much longer now, I promise. As soon as he gets back, I'll rest. I swear to Fel." Annie fidgeted anxiously, glancing over her shoulder with every other words, back towards the dirt-streaked window. _I hope he gets here before it's dark. He doesn't know the neighborhood very well, and I'd hate for him to get lost and not be able to find his way back. I hope that he's not hurt. Felsky, if he's injured..._

"Annie..." The expression on her mother's face made her look abruptly old, the laugh lines replaced with tracks carved by worry and sorrow, her muzzle more gray than white in the murky half-light. "Annie, sweetheart, Tobias isn't—"

_"Don't say it!"_

The words clawed their way from her throat as a shriek, and for a moment, she couldn't believe that she would even consider shouting at her mother, but why would Mama lie to her like that. Of course Tobias was coming back. He _had_ to come back, because he had said that he loved her, and she loved him, and that meant they were supposed to be together forever, didn't it? He was coming back. He was just lost, that was all, just a little delayed.

He had to come back, because otherwise, she had been waiting at a window for three moons, loving a hope and hoping for a love that hadn't been real. She had been hurting over someone who hadn't spared her a second thought, while her injuries remained so very, very real.

Her mother's ears flattened against her skull, but she didn't cringe away under that burning blue glare, the first light to come to those pale, dead eyes in a season's time. "He has to eat, Roxanne. You have to feed him, or he'll die."

"I don't _want_ him!" Her voice was choked with emotion, half a scream and half a sob. "I never wanted him. I'm a bad mama. I don't even want to touch him again, never again. I can't do this. Mama, look after him, please. I can't...I won't...I don't want this. You can find somebody else to take him, Mama, somebody else to feed him, 'cause I can't."

She was a coward, and it ate her up inside. What kind of mother was she if she could barely stand to look her son in the face, for fear that his eyes would have changed color?

And, like a coward, she turned. And like a coward, she ran.

And, like a coward, she did not look back.

* * *

She had never seen the streets after nightfall, because she was a good girl, and good girls never lasted long in the city. She did what all of the she-cats did when they had nothing left to give.

Sometimes, it was easier to imagine that they were him.

She still waited for him. He couldn't be much longer now, could he?

* * *

The caterwauls of the other girls were enough to wake her most mornings, vying for passersby, prospective customers. She lifted her head and stretched, all long, aching limbs from the night spent in restless sleep. The gutter was safer than most places, when it wasn't raining, but it hardly made for a bed.

The catcalls were louder than usual, and that brought her to her feet. That meant a new customer, not their select few that passed by at least once a week, not one of the guards or the runners. The ginger she-cat smoothed down her ruffled fur, blinked her blue eyes until they gleam brightly as a kitten's, curled a smile across her muzzle. She stepped out of the gutter with a quick shake of her pelt, ensuring that no leaves clung to her pelt, and moved into the open.

_We're all starving to death because of you, Annie_, one of the other girls had told her once, voice tinged with respect and a hint of that damnable pity that they all tried to hide from each other. _They all want you, 'cause you've got something that we don't. You don't look like a whore. You look respectable, like a good girl._

His pelt gleamed in the sunlight, and the scowl he wore wasn't enough to dim his eyes.

She was frozen for a moment, gawking, wide-eyed. _It's him. It's him. He's finally come back, to take you far away, to make you a queen just like he promised._ He was heading her way, head held high as he padded down the filthy, litter-strewn street. He rounded the corner, and just like that, she was unpetrified, brought to life by the sight of his figure retreating into the early-morning skyline.

She wasn't going to let him leave her again. Never again.

"Tobias! Tobias!" The ginger she-cat raced after him, and the tom whipped around at the sound of his name, eyes narrowed to slits.

She skidded to a halt in front of him, panting, out of breath. "You...you came back, Tobias," she mewed softly, awestruck. "Just like you promised. You came back."

The scrape of claws over asphalt. The curl of his lip. The disgusted gleam of two beautiful, bottle-green eyes, eyes she knew her son would have inherited.

It was simple, really, to break a cat with a few small gestures. Annie knew what was coming before he ever opened his mouth.

"Do I know you?"

She gaped at him for a moment, trying to ignore the bitter cold that was growing in the pit of her stomach, leeching away the hope, the euphoria, the ecstasy of only moments before. "No. No, you remember me, don't you? Tobias, you remember me. Roxanne. Annie. Y-you were lost, and I showed you the way out of the neighborhood. _Annie_. You said that you loved me. Tobias, _please_. You remember me. Don't you?"

And he was turning away, and she was chasing after him, just as she had been doing for all these moons.

"Please, Tobias, please just stop for a moment. It's me, it's Roxanne. I h-have a son—_Fel_, he looks just like you except for the pelt, right down to the eyes. Bottle. His name's Bottle, because of his eyes. Your eyes. Tobias, _please_."

She barely leapt back in time as he whipped around again, unsheathed claws catching the light as they slashed at where her throat had been only moments before. "I don't know you, you stupid bitch," he growled. "I don't care about you. I don't care about your stupid son. I've never bedded a whore in my life, but if you don't turn around, I'll have killed one before the day is done."

The street was very quiet.

Annie fancied that she could hear the sound of her heart shattering, piece by piece falling into a black void, finally breaking apart from injuries that had been festering for all these moons.

The street was very quiet, and the new girl stepped off of her corner. The ginger she-cat was very pretty for a whore, one that Annie had never seen on her street. What beautiful green eyes, she thought.

Brand smiled. "Hello, Tobias."

The street was very quiet. Annie only saw the cats moments before she heard them, and then the street was quiet no more.

She could have run, she supposed. The cats were not after her, after all. They wanted him, Tobias, an entire pack of them lunging for his throat. She could have run or joined in, ripping the golden tom's heart from his chest.

Lily's daughter Roxanne had never learned to fight, because she was a good girl. Annie the whore had not been a good girl in a very long time, and she had learned a thing or two.

It was madness. There was nothing glorious about battle, nothing exhilirating or thrilling. I want to go home, she though, over and over again as she traded slash for slash, bite for bite. I want to go home.

But she couldn't leave him, oh no. She'd only just gotten him back, and he wasn't going to leave her again.

She did not know the tom who pushed her to the ground and sank his teeth into her throat, but she knew his eyes. Pale, eerie green, not the bottle-green of her son's, her Bottle's. There was an odd sense of relief as he ripped away flesh and tendon, a slow, drowsy warmth that spread throughout her entire body as the scarlet gushed from her throat, red blood on red fur. It was an odd thing, to know that she was dying.

Annie closed her eyes as they swarmed around Tobias, going in for the final kill after what seemed like hours of torture. She did not open them again. Her wait was finally over, her watch done.

_"As soon as he gets back, I'll rest. I swear to Fel"_

She kept her promise, because she was a good girl.

* * *

**AN: Aaaaand, there we have it! I've decided to restart this whole challenge, and this was definitely a fun way to begin. This is all theorizing, but li'l Annie was just too good to resist.**


	2. Chapter 2: Sinking

**AN: Definitely a warning for Ali's dirty mouth. She kinda got out of control with it. And I may have lied about no intentional heartbreaking, Prin. :D**

When she first awakens from a dreamless sleep hazed with the red of blood and poppies, she wishes that the earth would simply swallow her up.

It feels like a dream when they first begin to look nervous as she, sleep-slow and pain-drunk, asks to see them. Tolbert's fur has never looked so white as it does now, pristine compared to her dark pelt tinged russet with half-dried blood. "Ali, you need to sleep, honey," he begins slowly, in that quiet, careful tone one reserves for burials. "You lost a lot of blood. You need rest."

But she sits up then, too heavy with painkillers to know and still lucid enough to feel the _wrongness_ of it. "Where're my babies, Tolb?" she slurs in a voice unfamiliar to her own ears, glazed green eyes meeting his bloodshot amber.

And he tells her then, in a voice soft as the nest of rags beneath her paws, that their babies had come too early, that even Aether with all her experience had not been able to save them, that her children are already somewhere buried deep down, never to open their eyes and see the light of dawn for the first time.

She leaves him with three bloody gashes burning like tendrils of flame down his muzzle before she succumbs kicking and screaming to the medicine's crushing weight once more, praying desperately all the while for the gods to let her sleep forever, to let her sink deep beneath the earth's surface and rest always with the children that she's failed.

Alifair wakes up the next morning from the first of the nightmares that will never entirely go away. The gods are cruel, and life is crueler still.

* * *

"How are you, Ali? Is there anything I can get you, anything I can do? Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry. You're strong, so strong. We'll always be here for you, you know that, right? Whatever you need, sweetheart, whatever you need."

They all whisper it, kind, nameless faces and soft eyes bright with sorrow, before turning their backs to pull their children closer, holding on to their babies for reassurance that they haven't lost what matters to them most. A life cut short is a tragedy; a life never begun is a misfortune that settles a stigma on the broken mothers who bear them.

Alifair's become more acquainted with Sorrow these days.

She never mentions it to anyone, not her solemn family, not her dark-eyed mate, not this endless queue of comforters and well-wishers. The tiny tabby keeps silent as those needling, vicious whispers pick incessantly at the back of her brain, holing it up deep within herself as she nods silently to the white noise of the she-cats' well-intentioned, painful attempts at comfort. One of them brings her own kits with her one day, small and bright-eyed, and Ali barely escapes the conversation without vomiting.

She embraces Sorrow, letting the bitter hissing twist and slip into every corner of her mind, accepting the constant stream of vitriol without a whisper of defiance. The she-cat, so small without her moon-round belly, only bows her head; _pitiful pathetic failure murderer kitkiller disgrace fallen_ is easier for her to believe in than the uncertainty that would take its place, the frightening, indistinct idea of what she's supposed to be now. There is no word for a mother who had lost her children, no name for a she-cat who has seen her kits' deaths done by her own paw.

She would rather be _pitiful pathetic failure_ than nonexistent, and so she takes all that she's given.

* * *

The she-cat isn't sure of how to describe those weeks she spends with Sorrow as her companion, her confidante, her closest, most poisonous friend. Years later, when she will struggle to explain a world spitting acid and tinged with gray, and words she knows fall short, and green eyes that have held as much pain as her will only blink in silent understanding.

Sweet Little Ali slowly becomes Poor Little Ali to the world, whispers slick with pity enough to make her turn her ears towards Sorrow, choosing the harsh snarls over the wilting sympathy any time. Alifair sometimes wonders if she really did die that day after all, trapped in a limbo where every word, every touch, every gesture seems to reach for her from a world hidden behind a veil that paints everything a dull, lifeless shade of gray that makes her think _oblivion._

Even her mother's words take twice as long for the she-cat to comprehend, the tiny tabby blinking in quiet consternation until she manages to string them together into something comprehensible.

"Ali? Did you hear me, baby? I asked if we could talk for a minute." Her mother stands before her, the picture of everything that Alifair is not, tall and golden with fur soft as a kitten's and a belly still plump from birthing two litters. The older she-cat's expression is something she can't even begin to untangle, not with Sorrow beating into the back of her brain, almost too loudly for her to hear anything else.

"Yes, ma'am, I heard you," she replies quietly. "What is it?" The little bobtail sits down, closing her eyes against the roar of guilt. _Enough,_ she thinks feebly, and for the moment, Sorrow recedes, although the constant rhythm of _pitiful pathetic failure_ remains.

It is quiet enough, though, that Alifair is able to piece together most of her mother's glib whispers, silky, placating blames wrapped around the secret she'd held into for over a moon now. With every word, though, the voices grow louder, nearly drowning out her mama's voice with the torrent of hatred.

"You were too young, baby."

_Pitiful._

"You weren't ready, I could tell, but his parents were pushing you so hard. It was like you didn't have any choice."

_Failure._

"And you were always so _willful,_ could never listen to those that had your best interests at heart. You always had to do it your way, your way or not at all. I was trying to help, but you wouldn't listen to reason."

_Disgrace._

"I only did what I had to do, sweetheart, do you understand? It was all for you. Things will be better this way."

_Murderer._

"You'll see one day."

_Fallen._

"_Enough_!" someone snarls, and Alifair can't even place the voice as her own. Everything falls silent for a moment, Sorrow and her mother too shocked to speak as this little she-cat, Poor Little Ali who had accepted defeat without a murmur, shrieks in her fury. "You _bitch._ You took them from me."

Sorrow seems to stand beside her mother now, just as complicit in Ali's fall as the golden queen. Its voices, with their tiny, needling words that had sunk like claws into her mind, quieten immediately as rage overtakes her, turning the black pain in her blood to flame like a spark to kerosene.

"How the fuck do _you_ know what's best for me?" she hisses, bristling as she stalked stiff-legged to stand in from of her mother. "You had no goddamn right to do what you did! You killed my babies. You killed your own fucking _grandchildren_ in cold blood because they didn't fit with the future you'd imagined, and I'll break your neck if you try to lay some kind of claim on me again."

Cap hears her before she can get a good swipe in, the golden tom dragging her away by the scruff as she screams and thrashes in her attempts to get at Sita, to grab her mother by the throat and make her bleed until the world is stained crimson. "It's not worth it, it's not worth it, it's not worth it," he murmurs unceasingly in her ear, holding her tightly until they've reached the den once more and she's screaming into Johnsie's chest. "It's not _fair_," she sobs, head buried in his gilded fur.

Sorrow, for once, is silent.

It's the last time that she grieves aloud.

* * *

Rose watches her moons later with wide, horrified eyes. "Ali, I can't be. I, I, I'm supposed to go live with Xander in a few days, I _can't_ be pregnant. Daddy'll _kill_ me. Daddy'll kill _Johnsie,_ oh Fel, please, I can't. I can't." The little she-cat blanches under her pelt, white flesh under whiter fur. Tolbert's youngest sister still believes in bedtime stories and happy endings, moons too young to be a mother, just like Alifair's brother is too young to be a father.

She wants to kill him for doing something so monumentally stupid, but all she can see when she looks at the pale queen is Sweet Little Ali with her moon-round belly and still-soft eyes. Sorrow murmurs in her ear, voice sweet as the first bite of a ripe holly berry.

"Rose, I need you to look at me. _Rose_." The little she-cat looks up from her paws, amber eyes dark with fear. "It's okay, alright? Calm down. You're fine. Everything's going to be fine. We just need to think."

It's quickly becoming one of her favorite words, _fine,_ a quick, reassuring white lie that covers places where the truth won't. _Yes, of course I'm fine,_ she meows with a smile almost everyday, even as an endless mantra of _fuck you fuck you fuck you_ combats Sorrow howling in her ears, threatening to drag her down again after she's spent so long fighting her way back up.

"Ali, I don't know how to be a mama," she whispers, insistent as a tremor wracks her small frame. "What if I can't love 'em right? What if they don't love me? What if they don't make i—" She cuts herself off abruptly, eyes widening in remorse, but Alifair already knows what she's going to say.

_What if they don't make it?_

Sorrow beats at the back of her skull, screaming its endless mantra, filling her brain with _pitiful pathetic failure your fault murderer kitkiller disgrace fallen,_ on and on.

_That's quite enough of that, thank you._

She's not Sweet Little Ali. She's not Poor Little Ali. She's Ali, Alifair, and she's had quite enough of Sorrow's wailing, thank you.

"Rose," she meows, voice calm in a way that her mind is not, racing as she imagines how many ways this can go wrong. "We'll figure this out, but you're going to be a fine mother. You'll love your babies, and your babies will love you, and that's all that will matter. You can come stay in mine and Tolbert's den while he's gone, and we're going to figure this out, okay? C'mon."

Even as the little she-cat follows her to the den, Sorrow's voice drops to a murmur in Ali's ears, suitably cowed as she pushes it far back, her attention focused on the white queen padding behind her. She can do this, she tells herself. Rose needs her to hold it together, and she can do this. She can fix this.

She's spent too long fighting her way back out, trying to hold it together, pushing Sorrow and Sita and the gray tinge away, that she can't not do this. Alifair's finally found her way back up, and she will not sink again, thank you very fucking much.


End file.
